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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A sweet pudding made with currants, raisins, molasses, suet, and spices, baked for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl.

  2. In a separate bowl, combine the molasses, eggs, suet, and milk.

  3. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix well.

  4. If the mixture is too firm, add a little more milk.

Cook and serve

  1. Divide the mixture into two parts and place each in a cloth.

  2. Boil the puddings for 4 hours.

  3. Serve with hard sauce.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  3. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Raisin + molassestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure as they set during cooking.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich in texture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding a tender, light body.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and a deep flavor.

The step that matters

Adding more milk. Flour hydrates gradually, so a firm batter may need a little more liquid to become soft enough. Adding milk only when the mixture is clearly too stiff avoids a dense, dry pudding.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (currant, bread, raisin, molasses, flour, egg, sugar):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Datesfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against currant, bread, raisin, molasses, flour, egg, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More plum pudding recipes

English 165Christmas 156Sauce 71Eggless 34Baked 33Vegetable 19 See all 649 →

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